Chelsea Clinton to Be NBC News Special Correspondent

NBC has hired Chelsea Clinton, the daughter of former President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as a full-time special news correspondent.

Clinton, 31, was to start work at news division offices on Monday morning, The New York Times quoted NBC News President Steve Capus as saying. She will work on stories for part of the network’s “Making a Difference” series, which runs on “NBC Nightly News.”

Clinton has remained largely out of the public eye since her father was elected president in 1992 — first by her parents’ choice, then hers.

But Capus told the Times that an intermediary contacted him in July with word that “she was kicking around what she wanted to do next.”

During a meeting with her, Capus said, “I asked her: ‘What are you interested in doing?’ ”

She told him that she had been moved by stories of people making personal contributions during her mother’s presidential campaign in 2008.

“What we talked about was, if she were to come on board, that’s the kind of thing she would be interested in doing. We knew she wasn’t going to do the lead story. But having somebody who was going to do really captivating feature assignments for the ‘Making a Difference’ franchise really kind of synced up,” Capus told the Times.

Those features have become popular on NBC’s evening newscast, spotlighting people whose volunteering efforts improve the lives of others in their communities.

Capus told the Times that Clinton replied, “That’s the kind of thing, if this were to happen, that I would really like to do.” He added, “It’s not about Chelsea Clinton saying, ‘Here I am; I want to be a TV star.’ ”

Clinton, who was not available for comment, did issue a statement saying: “I hope telling stories through ‘Making a Difference’ — as in my academic work and nonprofit work — will help me to live my grandmother’s adage of ‘Life is not about what happens to you, but about what you do with what happens to you.’

The Times quotes a Chelsea Clinton confidant as saying she plans to donate all the money she earns from NBC to the Clinton Foundation and the George Washington University Hospital in the name of her grandmother, who died this month.